


Dynamic

by dehautdesert



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: A/B/O, Alpha Hannibal, Alpha Will, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universes, Beta Hannibal, Beta Will, Everything You Would Expect From This Show, Hannibal is Hannibal, Lazy Author, Multi, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Hannibal, Omega Verse, Omega Will, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Romance, Talking, Warnings May Change, and more - Freeform, other stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-05 16:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4186029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dehautdesert/pseuds/dehautdesert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many worlds out there and many A/B/O verses. Contained within are some of them; each with Will and Hannibal in a different combination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "Mimic"

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the hopes that writing something else will get me back to writing for some of my other WIPs whenever I hit a block for this one. 
> 
> Also written because I think the Hannibal A/B/O genre needs some more variety.
> 
> We'll start off slow, and pick up the intensity as we go on; each chapter will be a different universe, each further along the timeline than the last. There are no specific warnings for the first chapter, except that it's very talky-heavy. There will probably be sex-type stuff in later chapters. :)

 

*~*~* 

 

The food really is delicious. The kind Will's dad had always hoped he'd be able to squeeze out of him eventually, only Will's talents had not lain in that direction—in the end Dad had always been the better cook, though he has to admit lacking in comparison to this.

Which is probably for the best. He wouldn't want to be dredging up too many memories of his own father, considering the circumstance with the Hobbs girl.

Not that Hannibal Lecter is old enough to be considered a father-figure to Will anyway; but somehow, like a sudden avalanche or flood that buried that certain place inside him and reshaped its topography, within the space of a day he's found himself with these two people in his thoughts the way he felt Garret Jacob Hobbs would think of his daughter—like family.

One day. It's been seven, since it happened, his one-week anniversary of his first taking of a human life, but it had been the very morning after he'd washed Abigail's blood off his skin and crashed into unconsciousness so heavy not even the nightmares could lift it up and crawl inside to speak to him that he had thought of her and Hannibal Lecter in a way that's difficult for him to put into words.

It's in the context of the three of them as part of a whole, he thinks, and perhaps that whole is nothing like a family—perhaps 'family' is the only concept near enough for his mind to use as a comparison, but he doesn't really know how else to describe this sudden compulsion.

It doesn't really make any sense. Family is an Alpha, an Omega, and offspring, or a Beta male, Beta female, and offspring; such is the picture that frames itself in Will's mind. Not that Will has anything against non-traditional dynamic partnerships, they just don't appeal to him. Will and Hannibal are not 'traditionally' compatible in dynamic, and Abigail is neither of their offspring, and yet...

He can't get either of them out of his head.

After all, it's not like traditional dynamic partnerships really appeal to him either.

"Where are you tonight, Will?"

Strangely, it's easier not to think about Hannibal when he's sitting in front of the man, eating his food. Maybe just having him there eases the strange pull towards the man that his higher brain tells him is likely nothing more than a trauma-forged false connection. After all, the doctor had been little more than mildly annoying to Will until his hands had closed over his, and the wound on Abigail's throat.

"Sorry," he mumbles, blinking and looking down at his plate. He's never been the type to gush over fancy food or fancy anything for that matter, and yet there's a part of him that feels touched, feels special because he's getting to eat something that looks like it wouldn't have been out of place on the table of one of the most high-end restaurants in the country.

That's also mildly annoying, but Will doesn't blame Hannibal for it. From what he's heard, everyone gets this treatment at Chez Lecter. That he would feel anything from it is his own cross to bear.

"No need to apologise," says Hannibal. "My asking you was only a courtesy. Your mind is with Abigail Hobbs, and I don't blame it for wanting to keep her company. She would otherwise be very lonely."

"She's in a coma," Will points out, rolling his eyes, "and probably not all that eager to spend time with me."

"On the contrary." Hannibal adjusts the napkin on his lap; affecting (to the degree that it is an affect) nonchalance. "I imagine you will be the first person she wants to see when she wakes up."

And why wouldn't he be?

"Because I saved her life," he mutters, "or because I killed her father?"

"Both."

With a sigh of annoyance, Will retorts, "And what about you? Aren't you keeping her company too?"

"A part of me is," Hannibal tells him bluntly.

That bluntness brings uneasiness to Will's already discomforted mind, like the expression of such personal truths could only be said with such detachment if they were used to hide something even more personal. He feels like Hannibal is lying to him somehow.

But everybody lies somehow. It's only that when he tries to peer past the lie to see Hannibal as he truly is, all he can make out is a mirror reflecting Hannibal's impressions of _him_ back at himself.

He thinks Hannibal probably has a more accurate impression of him than most. Although, he doesn't know that—

"However, I think Abigail will relate to you more easily. She did not see me, and I am not an Omega."

Will lets the spoon between his fingers rest against the bowl with a dull 'clink' and releases it.

_Touché, Doctor Lecter. Touché._

"Did Jack give you my file?" he asks.

There'll be a few scant seconds before his shock that Hannibal has already correctly deduced his dynamic turns to anger. At once he hopes to use them to make sure his anger is directed at the right person.

"He didn't have to," Hannibal tells him. He has to know that this will annoy Will, but he speaks like he's talking about a mutual acquaintance, and not the man in front of him. "Though I noticed no one else at the BAU seems to see it. Which is understandable, given your penchant for exhibiting typically Beta traits; your unusual empathy, your tendency to use your dress and body language to distance yourself from the notice of everyone in the room—"

"Says the actual Beta, who brazenly draws all eyes towards him with _his_ dress and body language."

Hannibal tilts his head in acceptance of that observation with a little smirk. "Arrogance is one of my more fatal flaws," he says. "But it is also a part of me. I can't help but wonder, how much of what you present is part of you, and how much is constructed to manage the opinions of those in the Bureau?"

"What, you think I put on this mask to earn the respect of my Alpha and Beta colleagues, but secretly yearn for the day a dashing Alpha on a shining white horse will see my inner beauty, get me a haircut and contact lenses and have me revealed as the fairest of them all so we can live happily ever after with a dozen screaming infants?"

He's glad to see Hannibal's smirk now holds distaste at the thought of such a thing, though he's clearly still amused.

"I'm afraid it would take more than a haircut and contact lenses to make you the fairest in the land, dear Will."

It amuses Will too, as Hannibal's eye flit up and down his worn and baggy clothes. He chuckles a little, and it's a strange feeling.

"I don't care how they see me at the FBI," he says. "Not in regards to my dynamic anyway, they can believe what they want to believe."

"But in regards to your sanity?"

"I would prefer they didn't run away screaming at my approach. Makes it difficult to teach." He decides to deflect this line of questions before it continues. "How about you, Doctor Lecter. You were a surgeon before you became a psychiatrist, weren't you? That's not exactly typical." His eyes wander towards the painting on the wall and he thinks of the drawings sitting back in the office. "Though the fine arts thing fits."

Not that Will is an art critic or anything, but he feels like Hannibal's art is contradictory—hyper-realistic seeming at a glance; detailed almost obsessively, and yet after a second glance he sees Hannibal's particular style separate from observational reality all over them; and at the same time adds that vision to the original, as if the man really could shape what was in front of him according to his perspective.

"Indeed," says Hannibal. "Some psychiatrists might even say the way I present myself is merely another expression of my artistic nature. Artists strive to evoke a particular feeling in those who view their art. Perhaps the way I choose to look is meant to rouse the same emotion in all who happen to behold me. A chain reaction, of sorts."

If that were the case it would mean the real Hannibal was hiding. But Will can't see how the man in front of him could ever bear to keep himself a secret.

Instead of playing along, he rolls his eyes. "Your life as performance art?" he asks. "I don't know. Maybe you just like fancy suits as much as I like cheap old shirts."

"That is entirely possible."

They share a smile that lights up in one of their eyes and responds in the other like a beacon. Hannibal's implication that not everything about him is as it seems has actually made Will suspect him less.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

Not that he had suspected him of anything specific; except that he might want to use him as some kind of research topic. But he doubts now that Hannibal would ever pressure him to bear himself before a crowded theatre like his mind was the Elephant Man. That would have been... vulgar.

"So here we are. A Beta who presents as an Alpha, and an Omega who presents as a Beta."

"I'll put the call out for an Alpha who presents as an Omega, although I don't think there are too many of them around."

"If that's what you think then I really must introduce you to a wider social circle," Hannibal murmurs, shaking his head a little.

"You want us to hit the club, Doctor Lecter?"

The words are dry, but the image in his head of Hannibal Lecter _clubbing_ almost makes him laugh out loud.

"Another time, perhaps."

He makes as if to pretend disapproval, but his smile can't be suppressed for more than a moment. After another moment, he schools that, and Will feels the atmosphere in the room change before Hannibal even says his next words. It has to be in his head, he knows, but he feels like the candles suddenly dimmed before he remembers with some embarrassment that there are no candles in the room.

It only feels as though there should be, as Hannibal asks him—

"Garrett Jacob Hobbs was an Alpha who presented with traits from across the board. What do you suppose his imitator presents as?"

Will stills just as he'd been about to pick his spoon back up. It's a shame because the soup really is lovely, and he is still hungry, but he can't bring himself to eat with a question like that hanging between them.

Hannibal takes advantage of his stillness to add, "And what do you suppose his imitator actually is?"

"You think..." Will begins, answering the question with a question, "that whoever murdered Cassie Boyle might be pretending to be someone they're not in aspects other than their plagiarism of Garrett Jacob Hobbs?"

An interesting idea. But...

_He's wrong. He's so wrong._

Perhaps Will had made that sound more mocking than he'd meant to, or else Hannibal had construed it as such, because the man across the table tilted his head with a slight frown as though the question was a criticism of him personally.

"You consider the actions of this other killer 'plagiarism'?"

As soon as he says it, Will suddenly knows that's wrong too.

"No," he admits. "It's more than an 'homage' though; it's... a reimagining. This artist wanted to paint the same picture from a different angle; casting it in a different light and evoking a different feeling to what Hobbs wanted. He's not someone who doesn't fit into their dynamic though. Someone like this... he fits in everywhere."

"A master of all the different angles," Hannibal surmises. "The question is, does he do more original work as well?"

"Oh, he's killed before," Will says, glancing behind Hannibal to the window that peeks out into the night. "But not as a copycat. Someone with this level of pride in their work would never let their name only be associated with that of others. It's not that he pretends to be something he isn't though. He doesn't need to struggle against himself to keep up whatever feeling he evokes in those around him; his 'presentation' is part of who he is as well."

"Only, there is also a side of him that no one ever sees," Hannibal finishes for him. "Alpha, Beta or Omega?"

Usually that question is so clear, even after only a single crime scene, that no hesitation follows. The copycat isn't the first to confound those senses and yet he can't help but sigh and put his palms flat on the table.

"I don't know," he says. "Male, definitely; he'd need the upper body strength to carry Boyle all the way from the road to where he left her—and to heave her onto the stag. I mean, I suppose it's possible it was an Alpha female, but statistically speaking not really possible enough."

Hannibal dabs at the corner of his mouth with his napkin—purely for show, there hasn't been a drop out of place on his end for the entire meal. He then rests his own spoon against his bowl and sets the napkin on the table.

"Statistically speaking," he begins, "A serial killer is an Alpha male in almost fifty percent of cases; far more than any other group. But the group most likely to be diagnosed with a lack of empathy..."

"Omega males," Will supplies.

They're also the second most common sex-dynamic combination in serial killers, as was frequently pointed out to him whenever anyone began to find him too annoying.

But that wasn't why Hannibal was pointing it out. He knows as soon as the words leave his lips, and wonders if Hannibal had simply been offering suggestion to see what sounded right to Will, or if he'd actually come to the same conclusion.

Sometimes, for the week or so he's known him anyway, it feels as though Hannibal isn't always entirely present when they converse; like he's on the other end of a telephone line, speaking from a distant place.

"I think he's a Beta," Will says, still trying to sort out how he'd come to that conclusion even as he forces it out into the open.

"Because of his artistry?" Hannibal asks.

Will shakes his head. "More prevalent among Betas but hardly unique to them. Da Vinci was an Alpha; Botticelli an Omega. No, this is about the empathy. The specific kind of empathy, or lack thereof, rather."

"With Cassie Boyle?"

"With Garrett Jacob Hobbs. The killer has no empathy for how Hobbs' identity as a _father_ influenced his work—on the contrary, he mocked it. Alphas and Omegas tend to identify heavily with traditional concepts of parenthood, even those who lack empathy for most people can apply the concept to family, especially to children. This killer... he doesn't have a family. I don't think he understands the concept."

Does anyone, says neither of them, though Hannibal clearly takes a moment to ponder what Will has said, averting his eyes while the word of the hour echoes in Will's mind.

_Family. Family. Family._

Garrett Jacob Hobbs' arms encircling Abigail's shoulders as she pulled the trigger on her first hunt; protecting her, pulling her in, never letting her go—

His dad rubbing tired eyes and sharp, half-inch long greying whiskers as he put his beer down to try and peer closer at the engine that was sitting in front of him. He'd needed to have his eyes checked, but they hadn't had the money—

Hannibal Lecter sleeping in a chair next to a girl they didn't know as she lay in her hospital bed. Hannibal Lecter bringing food to his house unasked; an intrusion he'd failed not to welcome as one might have expected from a surly, anti-social professor. Hannibal Lecter sitting across from him right now, cocking his head, enjoying their un-family dinner.

There are no personal photographs in the building, as far as Will has seen.

Hannibal doesn't have one either then.

Still, it would be ridiculous to assume...

"Does that necessarily mean he is a Beta, though?" Hannibal asks him—not self-conscious in the least, Will has to note: simply curious.

He sighs. "Not necessarily," he says. "Typical personality traits when it comes to dynamic have their outliers; they have their _millions_ of outliers, and frankly the last thing I want to do is get into a discussion about the 'dynamic-triumvirate', but that crime scene _feels_ like the work of a Beta. Maybe because it's combined with such artistry, I don't know."

Leaving the words there automatically manifests a silence that seems to last a thousand years.

Will decides to try and pick up his spoon again. It's the easiest way for him to not be sitting at this man's table, staring into space like the poor lunatic in the cell he's always feared he'd end up in, watched by _that_ kind of psychiatrist, and not the socialite attendant to rich professionals and their trophy spouses. Does Hannibal ever have to choke down his distaste for the artifice of his type of patient, he wonders.

He barely knows the man, he knows that, but he can't help but think about those doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, writers—all those he imagine slithering around the hoi polloi cauldron Hannibal swims in, sitting in the seat he's sitting in now, blowing bubbles of empty air while Hannibal smiles and plays the perfect host, and at the same time is what he plays to such an extent that the man and the art cannot be separated.

It's not about the clothes or the decor or the fancy meals. It's about the way those lips curve into the perfect painted smile, silently beckoning for adoration.

Although, he supposes it's unfair of him to cast Hannibal in this scene he's never seen him in. It's just how he imagines the man, and what Will Graham imagines somehow always turns out to be near enough to reality to call out for its own adoration.

The soup has gone cold.

It's still delicious.

"Do you think the way you see yourself as an Omega impacts how you view others in regards to their dynamics?" Hannibal asks him. "Especially if you don't know who you're trying to catch a glimpse of?"

Will snorts. He's beginning to catch on to Hannibal's tricks here—his real questions aren't the ones he's asking, but he hopes to get the answers he seeks from them all the same, and more likely than not, he will.

" 'How I see myself as an Omega'..." he repeats. "I can't help but think of a comedy show I once saw where bringing up this topic forced the self-reflecting Omega's Alpha boyfriend to leap out the window to their merciful end."

"Fortunately for us, this room is on the ground floor," Hannibal says without pause.

"I don't particularly care about being an Omega," Will tells him. "For me personally the only way it ever means anything in my life are the three weeks of the year I have to take off work. The handful of mindless comments thrown at me by petty people have frankly been too few to pay any mind to."

Maybe there would have been more of those if he interacted with other people more often. As it stands, few people even know him well enough to suspect he might be in heat when he takes that time off work, let alone peg that he isn't a Beta.

Not that it's a secret or anything.

Only, no one ever asks, because so few would even think to ask.

Just then, he realises he's opened up more to Hannibal in a week, and willingly, than he has to anyone else since his dad died.

"But you can empathise with those whose dynamic forms a strong part of their identity?"

"I seem to be able to. I don't think dynamic is a strong part of our copycat's identity, though. It's usually a lot easier to deduce. He'd see such distinctions as... animal, a throwback to our uncivilised past. This is a man who looks forward, to the height of what humans can become."

"And is he aiming for those heights? Or does he think he's already reached them?"

Will thinks.

He thinks of Cassie Boyle's pale, blood-drained shell mocking Hobbs' love for Abigail, the base instinct of a progenitor to secure the future of its progeny distorted by a crossed wire somewhere in his brain, shown in that field for the mundane thing the artist believed him to be, or at least it was mundane compared to his own work—and not just that. In these eyes Hobbs' mind itself was unsophisticated in its classification of those around him. Female. Omega. Daughter—Hobbs' type was so painfully simple, decided by such rigid, unforgiving lines he drew around others. This killer's victims have nothing but perhaps the barest hint of surrogacy in them. They're only pigs.

He thinks of the call made to Garrett Jacob Hobbs; so unlike a person he'd profiled as unimpressed by Hobbs to have made, to have reached out with—and yet maybe that wasn't about Hobbs at all. There's something almost like a scientist about this man; no lab coats, stark white rooms hidden from the world or clinical observation of soulless reactions for this character, oh no, there's something more akin to the natural philosophers of old in him; men searching for their god through nature.

He thinks this man must have a strange god, to have chosen such an abnormal part of nature for his observation.

He thinks of that tiny little thread he felt the killer send to him along with that corpse, like a rope tied to an arrow shot to some kind of fellow so as to be a point of crossing for that man to Will; thoughts, feelings, ideas—a gesture he can't help but feel has some origin in friendship. He should say 'in how this person sees friendship', but then, what is friendship apart from how we see it?

_Folie a deux_. Can mere human interaction reach the heights his new friend seeks?

"I don't know," he tells Hannibal at length. "I don't think this guy is going to reveal everything about himself in one sitting. I don't think he's revealed a hundredth of that, even."

Thinking anymore about it now will hurt his head, he can tell, so Will leaves it there and changes the subject to the first thing that comes to mind.

"This soup is something else, by the way. I'd almost ask you for the recipe, but I'm not exactly anyone's idea of a domestic god. To be honest I can't believe I'm even talking about the soup."

This is what happens when he tries normal social interaction.

"I'll take it as a compliment," Hannibal assures him. "It's an old family recipe, of sorts. Circumstances being what they are I was feeling nostalgic for the things I associate with family."

There's something strange in his eyes when he looks at Will just then. Something without a hint of artistry in its depths, and Will can't help but think that if he was only the normal kind of Omega who kept in touch with five hundred bubbly facebook friends and could never have dreamed of being able to see the world the way murderers and rapists saw the world, he'd know what he was looking at.

And Hannibal says.

"I fear this offering is only an imitation."

*~*~*

 


	2. "Platonic"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, that is the most kudos I have ever had in such a small amount of time; thanks everyone!
> 
> Anyway, here's the second A/B/O!Verse we find Will and Hannibal in. Last time was Beta!Hannibal and Omega!Will, this time Omega!Hannibal and Alpha!Will. Timeline roughly corresponds with S1E4; still no sex, but talk of upsetting things.
> 
> ...
> 
> ... Well, it is 'Hannibal', after all. Also, Alana shows up.

*~*~*

 

The light in the room is low; the sun sets out of the sight of the window and its fading natural glow is the only one that touches them.

"Did _you_ never have children of your own?"

The light stays the same, but something else in the room shifts.

Will's question was not voiced without thought—it's something he has indeed been thinking of asking for a while now, and it's a rude question, but Will feels like being rude right now; feels like provoking a reaction from the other man as if the isolation of his experience demand he reach up towards Hannibal and if he cannot reach him on his platform of collected stability, pull him down to his own level of self-doubt and frustration.

But Hannibal's expression doesn't change, not more than the fractional narrowing of eyes that move in thoughtfulness and not in anger. His head tilts ever so slightly.

A bird zips past the window, giving Will an excuse to avert his eyes as he shifts uncomfortably on a leather chair that feels less solid all of a sudden.

In the end it's only a short pause before he sighs and says; "I'm sorry. That was... incredibly inappropriate."

"Of all the inappropriate things that have been said to me over the years, I can assure you nothing from you has made the top hundred."

Will can't help but smile. Hannibal has a way of eliciting that from him.

"I'll have to try harder," he says.

Before he can worry that that too was inappropriate—and insensitive—Hannibal's lips curve to return his smile, and the moment becomes one of camaraderie.

"In answer to your question," Hannibal continues, once that moment has passed, "I came to terms long ago with the fact that an unfortunate malady from my past renders the question of offspring an entirely theoretical one."

This new information blossoms into two distinct vines of thought inside Will's skull; the first the obvious loud-coloured shame from his ill-considered remark touching on what for most people would be an extremely painful scar on their psyche. Hannibal doesn't look pained by any memory of this 'malady' he speaks of, or of the effects it had, but then the possible difference between what Hannibal 'looks' like and what he 'is' is a question that leads into that second growth.

There's a kind of thrill that Will experiences when this information is revealed; not a happy thrill, not exactly, though it's close enough to elation to make it twine into that other feeling of shame when he reminds himself of the nature of its subject. It's like leaning against the exact point of a labyrinth that opens a passageway to another part of the maze, a passage he hadn't been looking for nor known was there after he'd forgotten he was in a labyrinth altogether.

And sometimes he forgets that Hannibal is a person, and not only a winch that can pull him up when he's lowered himself so far into the cavern of other people's darkness that he can no longer feel even the low light of a day like this. It's a feeling a psychiatrist is probably used to cultivating to an extent, to keep safe distance from his patients, but sometimes Will thinks he forgets Hannibal's personhood out of some instinct of self-preservation, almost; because he has neither the time nor the energy to explore the twists and turns of someone who can so effortlessly follow the same paths he does and guide him back. Someone who seems to know and understand the topography of the strange country he wishes he'd never discovered, as though he himself has been there too.

At the same time, the inhabitants of that land are few and far between, and behind that instinct of preservation lies a deep curiosity about the man sitting before him, and it seizes up with satisfaction when he hears the admission.

The first vine dictates his response, of course.

"I don't know what to say," he tells Hannibal, the pause preceding his words saying everything. He closes his eyes and runs his fingers through his hair.

"Say what you like," Hannibal tells him. "There is no wrong response."

Will snorts. "Oh, there are a million wrong responses. I don't think there are any right responses, to be honest."

"Does it change how you think about me?"

What a question. It makes Will cringe, but he answers honestly.

"I don't think I've ever really thought about you being an Omega."

"But you noticed as soon as we met?"

"Of course," Will says, with another snort he hopes Hannibal isn't offended by.

Although the other man is tall and broad-shouldered for an Omega he dresses conspicuously according to his dynamic—patterns and colours by no means ostentatious, but not something Alpha or even Beta men would be expected to wear; coats never higher than knee-length, often double-breasted and with wide lapels. He never shows bare arms in public and usually sports some kind of jewellery typically associated with Omega males; a brooch, a tie-pin, a set of cufflinks—even an old-fashioned silver chain running from side to breast-pocket; accessory to the kind of pocket watch male Alphas of days gone by would have kept plain.

He doesn't think Hannibal chooses to wear such gendered dress to feel closer to his Omega side or anything like that. Rather he suspects the man enjoys the propriety of it, the perceived professionalism, and controlling the impression others have of him from the very first even as he sets their minds at ease—' _this is not a person who is unpredictable'_ , he imagines other people think. _'This person is safe'_.

"Is that a strange question?" Hannibal asks him. There's a certain dry amusement in his voice. "I have been mistaken for a flamboyant Alpha on more than one occasion."

Will glances up and down the length of Hannibal's body and tries to imagine the line of thought that would lead to such a mistake. A confusion between an Alpha who dresses like an Omega and an Omega with a physique more typical of an Alpha. What had it been that had made him see the truth at once?

"Is it difficult for you to imagine that, now that we are more well-acquainted?" Hannibal asks.

"That's probably part of it," Will admits. He can't really help it; apart from Hannibal's height there isn't really all that much that's Will considers 'Alpha' about him.

But then, Will is hardly a 'typical' Alpha. Perhaps that's also part of the problem.

His answer prompts Hannibal's eyes to narrow even further, pensively; he looks out the window for a long moment while some idea of his own takes root and begins to grow. Will feels like he can see the time-lapsed shoot spring forth behind dark eyes, and watched it coil upwards and coalesce into the next experiment.

"When Cassie Boyle was found in that field," Hannibal begins, "you described it to me as the negative that allowed you to see the positive. Do you think you could use me as your negative, in an attempt to catch this latest killer?"

Will's vision blurs as his eyebrows lower into a frown.

"How so?"

"You are sure the keeper of these 'Lost Boys' is an Omega?" Hannibal prompts. "How are they different to me?"

"She," Will says instantly, and instantly he knows it's true. The way he has surprised himself with this insight must be showing on his face, because Hannibal smiles at him triumphantly.

Yes. The 'mother' of the kidnapped children is female; as were all of the murdered mothers of the boys, as was—in all likelihood—the 'mother's own mother.

"And her desire to collect children implies she cannot have one of her own. Were they taken away from her, because of her instability—or can she, like me, not physically have her own children?"

The boys are all of a similar type, which suggests they are surrogates for someone, but then if that was the case, why would she be keeping so many of that same type together at a time? No, she wants what she's never had, not what she's lost. She's infertile.

And yet, there's something missing.

He hesitates to ask such a personal question, but Hannibal is the one who opened this door and if he dislikes treating Will as fine china, then the least Will can do is extend the same courtesy.

"Can I ask... what particular malady was it that left you incapable of having children?"

Hannibal doesn't blink, but Will can see him trying to decide how best to put his answer.

"Physical trauma," he says. "Political unrest leading to unfocused violence in the country of my birth—I was collateral damage, so to speak. There was no intent to sterilise me, but it ended up being the effect."

Will suddenly realises he doesn't know what the country of Hannibal's birth actually is. Eastern Europe, probably, but where exactly is something he's never bothered to ask.

That's the coherent thought that carries him through the invasion of negative feeling that hearing those words produces. He immediately assumes this happened before the adoption Hannibal mentioned earlier; to a child, and an Omega child at that.

It's the first time he truly does think of Hannibal as an Omega. Not in the physical sense; he wouldn't have been Will's type even if Will had been looking for someone—too complex, too much association with the dark—but rather in the social sense. An Omega in his pack, his tribe, viciously assaulted by an outsider while Will was unable to do his Alpha duty and defend him.

It happened long before they met, possibly before Will was even born, and yet Will feels like he failed.

The 'mother' must also feel a sense of failure.

"She's different," Will manages to say, through his sudden distress. He pushes it back; far enough away that he can't see it, or feel what he has no business feeling. "Her child-bearing abilities were never taken from her, they just failed to appear. Probably a genetic condition."

This seed grows a few more vines.

"She wanted to be a mother though, to have a family—to prove to her own mother that she could do better than her... she had siblings—brothers probably, and she was parted from them in some traumatic way. She blames her mother for that parting. The surrogates... the boys aren't surrogates for a lost child, it's the mothers. They're the surrogates. It's not about the children, that's why they're so easy to discard if they displease her. The particulars of her new family aren't all that important to her. Only that she has a family at all."

"Cross-reference female omegas with brothers whose home social services was called to with medical records of infertile women," Hannibal extrapolates; fluid and temperate like he knew all along this was the case.

"I'll call Jack," Will replies, words a solid gear clicking into place.

When he stands up from the armchair it's almost like coming out of hypnosis.

A slightly nauseous feeling turns to a mild headache at the front of his head in a couple of seconds, and the room looks brighter somehow, like a veil he hadn't noticed has been lifted away. Like he's passed out of some strange world that occupies the same time and space as basic reality, but on another 'plane of existence'—one deep within the mind as well as without.

He blinks and glances around the room as if to try and locate the source of this translocation; but among the bookcases, the decor and the exquisitely crafted furniture the only possible door he sees is Hannibal, who watches him curiously.

"Everything all right, Will?"

Will runs his fingers through his hair again. As soon as he hears Hannibal's voice he feels that he's enough returned to the realm of normalcy now he's left the mind-space of their Wendy Darling to experience what should be felt on learning that someone who is becoming important to you has had such a violent and traumatic thing happen to them.

Then he realises how he has responded to that revelation so far. More guilt. He scrambles for the appropriate thing to say.

"I... am sorry," he tries. "I didn't mean to use what happened to you as a tool. I... hate that you had to suffer something like that."

Hannibal exhales.

"The only upside that has ever come from my suffering something like that has been the opportunity to use it as a tool to prevent other suffering. I only hope the conclusions we drew are accurate."

So undaunted. Will wonders what it's like to be able to feel that way—if it can really be what Hannibal feels and not what he projects for Will's sake.

But he's not here to try and get inside Hannibal's head.

"I'll call Jack," he says again.

 

*~*~*

 

Alana tells him:

"You and Hannibal make a good team."

And there's a delay between Will's hearing of these words, and his understanding of them.

In the haze of the post-arrest ambience that has had him trying to distance himself from the feelings he knows are going through their Lost Boys and their Wendy, he's answered with non-committed shrugs to most of what's been said to him. But these words break his focus on not feeling the loss of family that aches in every pore of their killers, and thankfully they give him something to replace it with.

He turns to Alana, looks at her bright eyes and sees a kind of fond mischief in them, like they're sharing a secret. If that hadn't brought a rather obvious but nonetheless unwelcome thought to mind, he might have been embarrassed he hadn't been listening to her before he'd heard Hannibal's name come up.

As it stands, he has to ask—

"What, were you trying to set us up?"

The eye-roll she responds with is genuine enough for him to believe her when she says—

"Hannibal? Come on, Will, he's way too high-maintenance for you; if you two got together he'd spend half his life trying to vacuum up dog hair from the couch, and the other half in prison when he murdered you for getting engine grease on the rug."

Will chuckles a little. The corridors of the building at Quantico are almost empty near the lecture halls they stand in front of at this time of night, so he feels no need to avoid asking, "Did you two ever... ?"

This time, the blue eyes widen as if the idea of two intelligent, attractive people in the same field having even as much as a one night stand is absurd. She laughs with disbelief, he tries not to let his relief show.

"Me and—? No. No, we never went there."

"Was it the height?"

She shoves him.

"Rude, Will. There's nothing wrong with a tall Omega," she says, but then with a slight wince allows him, "I suppose back when I was a student it may have contributed to my feeling not Alpha enough to even entertain the notion. Honestly, someone like Hannibal is the kind of person you don't think actually exists in real life. I think it took a while for him to seem real to me, and by that time we were already just good friends."

_How good?_ Will wonders, at once thinking back to the earlier revelation. Good enough that Alana also knows about the incident in Hannibal's past? He wants to ask her about it in some ridiculous attempt to know details without putting Hannibal through any unwanted trips along a memory tightrope, but somehow he knows it would be news to her, and not news Hannibal has given him permission to share.

Should he feel bad he wants to know more about this incident? That he wants to jump the queue of god knows how many tedious social niceties await before Hannibal feels 'real' enough to him that he's comfortable asking for more detail?

Why does he want more detail?

He is an Alpha, naturally given to search for solutions to problems that are placed before him, but Hannibal has not asked him to solve his problem—has indeed claimed it to already be solved. Yet knowing what he now knows is new enough to Will that he feels compelled to work through it.

"Something wrong?" Alana asks him.

"I certainly hope not."

Both he and Alana turn to find Hannibal approaching them from the stairs to the floor above, no doubt having deliberately chosen a contrary path down from the interview rooms he'd been in, in the hopes of catching them. He is composed and elegant as always, soft artificial light casting shadows that make every movement look like a frame from an old film—the environment perfectly designed to capture the most striking vision of him. Still so unreal, as Alana had said, although that in itself comforts Will; knowing they had such a perception in common.

To be in love with a fellow Alpha, he knows, will bring all the tired old sayings from anyone who ever finds out. 'A household can only have one head'. 'Love your own reflection and you'll end up drowned'. 'An Alpha who seeks out an Alpha is no Alpha'. A dozen sets of statistics on the failure rate of inter-Alpha relationships, both dubious and damning, would be paraded out for him—perhaps even from Alana herself.

But not from Hannibal, he thinks.

"Hannibal," Alana greets him, smiling. "Speak of the devil, as they say."

Hannibal's head tilts with interest, the beginnings of a smile on his face.

"I can assure you, Alana," he comes to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, "a devil of that kind does not exist."

"Thanks, Kaiser Sozé," says Will, rolling his eyes.

The slight, curious frown Hannibal gives him makes him chuckle. Of _course_ Hannibal's never seen _The Usual Suspects_. Will can't really imagine him watching a movie that isn't in black and white. Or as art-house as the film Will imagined he'd stepped out of.

"Well," says Alana, "If there were a devil as charming as you, Hannibal, I'd happily be on my way to hell. Right now I'm only on my way home to sleep, so I'll say goodnight to both of you."

It's a strange thing to feel relief and regret for the exact same reason. The desire to be around Alana in conflict with the desire to keep himself safe from the consequences of his feelings. Will thinks relief wins out though, so he only nods as Hannibal performs a far more articulate farewell, then watches Alana smile back at both of them as she walks away.

And it is at the both of them, he notices, and not each of them in turn—despite her assertion that she isn't trying to set them up. And maybe she isn't. Maybe she just welcomes what she hopes is a positive influence in Will's life.

Although a natural cynic, Will can't help but find himself sharing that hope.

Hope can be a frightening thing, however, and the little pinprick of fear that he can't help but notice compels him to break the silence between himself and Hannibal.

"How'd it go?" he asks.

"As you probably imagine it," Hannibal tells him. He's matter-of-fact, but in a way that implies regret. "The youngest boy still has a family he may return to one day; the other two will have to find a new one, and removing the idea that it is normal to make your own through violence will be difficult for all of them. The Alpha boy actually believes he was in control of the situation."

Will shakes his head. No doubt that had been part of the Omega woman's design, part of her fantasy even. Disowning responsibility as easily as she disowned members of her surrogate family.

The mother's daughter she'd tried so hard not to be that she'd self-fulfilled her prophecy.

"You're angry," Hannibal observes. "Still resentful of those you see throw away a family you believe to be beyond your reach?"

An annoyed sigh escapes Will's throat.

"Must you psycho-analyse everything?"

"Of course. I'm a psycho-analyst."

_Walked into that one, Graham_ , he tells himself, and is grateful he's not too angry not to see the humour in it.

"Abigail Hobbs is not beyond your reach," Hannibal says gently, before Will can make any reply of his own.

It throws him off, and without thinking he says, "Or beyond yours?" and immediately regrets it.

But Hannibal doesn't take it as an accusation spat in frustration, as Will had thought it was as soon as he said it. And it's odd, how as soon as Hannibal makes the comment he makes next, Will believes Hannibal's view of his intention more than his own.

He says, "So you are angry for my sake as well. Because of what I told you during our earlier conversation?"

"I'm... sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"It's no sin to feel anger on hearing of such an occurrence." Hannibal starts making to move down the corridor towards the exit, and Will finds himself following. "I would venture to say that despite a decidedly mixed first impression, you and I have become friendly. I know that had you told me you had been so seriously assaulted in your past, I would feel just as angry."

"Yes," says Will ruefully, "Well there may also be a vein of Alpha chauvinism in my indignation."

"Call it Alpha chivalry instead, and I'll be flattered," says Hannibal, his head leaning towards Will conspiratorially. He grins with his mouth closed and Will can't help but smile back for a moment before he returns his line of sight to what's in front of him.

It's his turn to choose the vine he wants to show Hannibal, to have the other man inspect his thought and tell him whether to feed it, cut it back or kill it off and plant something else in his place. Their psycho-horticulture in the hallways of the FBI, gardened behind walls only they know are there.

He decides to take a chance.

"Don't you think it's unhealthy?" he asks him. "An Alpha and an Omega who aren't bonded raising a girl who isn't theirs? All three of us with our own special traumas?"

"It's good for a family to have something in common," says Hannibal, and if Will had been looking at him and not at the door he'd been about to open, he's sure he would have seen the other man shrug.

_So Hannibal_ , he thinks, and he gives the Omega a look.

"Doctor Lecter, I think it's possible you are the most self-assured person I've ever met."

Now he's looking at Hannibal, for the briefest moment he wonders what grows in the garden in his mind that Will has yet to see. He imagines there are acres in there that Hannibal has not yet shown him. Another maze to navigate.

Interestingly, Hannibal's smile is now smaller, but it fills his eyes fuller than most of those Will sees him cultivate.

He peeks behind those walls and yet he can't quite see what's on the other side.

Only darkness.

"I'm glad to be assuring, Will," Hannibal tells him. "As I can assure you, you are to me."

 

*~*~*


End file.
